Stanley Kunitz, one of our great poets, planted a spruce tree next to his house in Provincetown, Mass., and over the years that tree attracted some tenants, a family of garden snakes. I didn't know garden snakes climb trees, especially needly ones like a spruce, but they do.
Here's something else I didn't know. Sometimes, when the sun is less with us in September and October, garden snakes will seek the sunny side of a tree, climb up and then hang in the sunshine. It's their way of staying warm.